Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016) Hands-on, First Impressions

Samsung has just officially launched their new Galaxy J series in the Philippines. One of them is the Galaxy J7 (2016) that features Sammy’s own Exynos octa-core chipset and a 5.5-inch AMOLED display. This newer version gets an upgrade mostly in the choice of material used as it now has an aluminum frame surrounding the handset. Here’s our first impression of the device straight from the launching.

The Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016) sports a 5.5-inch Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels which equates to a passable 267ppi of pixel density. Good thing Samsung’s AMOLED panel gives an overall high-quality picture to compensate for the lack of sharpness. Up front are the relatively large display with the usual earpiece, 5MP front-facing camera with an LED flash, and a couple of sensors on top. Down below is the familiar Samsung home button sandwiched by two capicitive keys for return and recent apps. Unfortunately, the keys don’t have backlighting.

To its right is the power/lock button while the volume keys are on the left. The sides of the handset show a similar design to the likes of the former Galaxy S6 flagship.

The top part of the device is virtually clean aside from the usual plastic strips for signal penetration. This leaves the bottom end to house the microUSB port for charging and connectivity, and the 3.5mm headset jack. A tiny pinhole for the microphone is also present.

The back has a removable plastic panel for access to the removable battery, SIM card, and microSD card slots. The main camera module sits in the upper center with the loudspeaker and LED flash beside it.

Thanks to the upgrade from plastic to metal, the J7 (2016) feels better on hand compared to its predecessor. While a design change is a very much welcome, Samsung opted to use their familiar blueprint with very few tweaks.

The variant presented during the launch is rocking Exynos 7870 with eight Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.6GHz. It’s paired with the Mali-T830MP2 GPU for graphics and an ample 2GB of RAM. A quick AnTuTu benchmark will show a good score of 50,815 while the smaller brother, the J5 (2016), gets a lower 28,039 since it has the inferior Snapdragon 410. Both has Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box, and yes, there’s Samsung’s skin on top.

The camera department is handled by a 13MP main camera with an LED flash and a 5MP wide-angle selfie camera with its own LED flash as well. It’s too early to give a verdict to the quality but the preview on the phone’s display shows great shots. Here’s a sample of both the rear and front camera:

There’s 16GB of internal storage and the OS consumes 4.98GB, leaving 10.86GB available to the user. Samsung is bundling a 32GB SanDisk microSD card for every purchase of the J7. That makes a spacious 48GB of total memory.

Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016) specs:
5.5-inch HD Super AMOLED display, 267ppi
1.6GHz Samsung Exynos 7870 octa-core CPU
Mali-T830 GPU
2GB RAM
16GB internal storage
MicroSD card up to 128GB
13MP rear camera, f/1.9 aperture, LED flash
5MP front camera, f/1.9 aperture, LED flash
Dual-SIM
Signal Max (for wider signal coverage)
4G LTE
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.1
NFC
GPS, A-GPS
Android 6.0 Marshmallow
3,300mAh battery
151.7 x 76 x 7.8mm
170g

The Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016) is now available for Php14,990 at Samsung Experience Stores and authorized dealers nationwide. We’ll be having a review unit in the coming week, so stay tuned for the full review.